Summary of the day so far
It is approaching 6pm in Kyiv and 7pm in Moscow. The below is Luke Harding’s latest report from Kyiv:
And here is a summary of the key updates from today’s live blog:
Speaking to Fox News in an interview on Sunday, referring to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the US president, Donald Trump, said the Ukrainian president had taken “money out of this country under Biden like candy from a baby” and described Zelenskky as not being “grateful”. It comes after the White House suspended military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv in the after a confrontation between Trump and Zelensky at the end of February.
When asked if he expected Zelenskyy “to come back” and complete the minerals deal, Donald Trump told Fox News: “Yeah. I think so. I think it’ll happen.” Later on in the interview he added: “You know the other thing with Europe that bothers me? They’ve given Russia more money, by far, for buying their oil than they put into Ukraine.”
Zelenskyy said that Russia has carried out “hundreds of attacks” against Ukrainians this week. In a post on X on Sunday, Zelenskyy said various weapons, including about 1,200 guided aerial bombs, nearly 870 attack drones and more than 80 missilies of different types, had been used by Moscow.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine is “fully committed” to having a constructive dialogue with US representatives in Saudi Arabia next week, even as Donald Trump said he found it “easier” to deal with Russia than with Ukraine in efforts to end the war. “Realistic proposals are on the table. The key is to move quickly and effectively,” the Ukrainian president said on X ahead of his trip to Saudi Arabia next week.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that recent advances by Russian forces against Ukraine in the Kursk region meant that Kyiv’s soldiers were almost surrounded. In a post on Telegram about the fighting in Kursk, Medvedev wrote: “The lid of the smoking cauldron is almost closed. The offensive continues.”
Russia was storming the town of Sudzha on Sunday after special forces used a gas pipeline to surprise Ukrainian units as part of a major offensive to eject Ukrainian soldiers from the western Russian region of Kursk, pro-Russian war bloggers said. Yuri Podolyaka, a Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger, said Russian special forces had walked about 15km along the inside of a major gas pipeline and some had spent several days in the pipe before surprising Ukrainian forces from the rear near Sudzha.
Russia on Sunday claimed the capture of a village in Ukraine’s Sumy region after mounting a cross-border offensive while battling Ukrainian troops in its Kursk region. Russia’s defence ministry said in a briefing that its forces had “liberated” the small village of Novenke in Sumy region near the border with Kursk region. The Guardian has been unable to independently verify the report.
A Ukrainian drone hit an industrial facility overnight in Russia’s Volga river region of Chuvashia, 1,300km (800 miles) from the border with Ukraine, the regional governor said on Sunday. The strike – one of the deepest yet into Russia by a Ukrainian drone – caused no casualties, Chuvashia governor Oleg Nikolayev said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian authorities said earlier that air defence units had destroyed 88 Ukrainian drones overnight, with no injuries or other damage reported. Russia’s defence ministry said 52 of the drones were destroyed over the border Belgorod region, while 13 were over the Lipetsk region and nine were over the Rostov region, both in Russia’s south-west. The rest of the Ukrainian drones were downed over Russia’s Voronezh, Astrakhan, Krasnodar, Ryazan and Kursk regions, the ministry said.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that it had taken the village of Konstyantynopil, in the southern part of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The Guardian has been unable to independently verify the report.
Ukraine’s air defences shot down 73 of 119 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack on Sunday, the air force said. It said that 37 drones were “lost”, in reference to the military’s use of electronic warfare to redirect them. The military said damage was recorded in six Ukrainian regions but provided no immediate details.
France will use interest from Russian assets to fund another €195m ($211m) in arms for Ukraine, armed forces minister Sébastien Lecornu said in a newspaper interview. France also plans to hand over some of its older armoured fighting vehicles, such as its AMX-10RC and personnel carriers, Lecournu told La Tribune weekend newspaper.
Poland, which pays for Ukraine’s Starlink internet services, may seek an alternative if Elon Musk’s company proves to be “unreliable”, the foreign minister said on Sunday after the billionaire speculated about turning off access to the system. “Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish digitisation ministry at the cost of about $50m per year,” Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski wrote on X. He added: “The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”
The EU still sees the United States as “allies” despite president Donald Trump’s verbal broadsides against the bloc, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday, while stressing the need for Europe to “step up” on defence. When questioned specifically about the future of the transatlantic relationship with the US, von der Leyen said that, while an allied bond persisted, “this does not mean that the pattern that we had the last … 25 to 30 years … is still the right one”.
The EU remains committed to entirely phasing out the supply of Russian gas, von der Leyen said on Sunday. “I commit very clearly to phasing out the Russian gas … this is an absolute must,” von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels. “We’ve been successful, but we always see of course that there are loopholes where we have to be careful and we have to work on.”
German chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz has said he would like talks with France and the UK about sharing their nuclear weapons, but not as a substitute for US nuclear protection of Europe. “Sharing nuclear weapons is an issue that we need to talk about … we have to become stronger together in nuclear deterrence,” he said in an interview on Deutschlandfunk radio on Sunday.
The UK government is not considering reintroducing conscription, a senior minister has said, as the Latvian president said European countries should consider the measure. Pat McFadden, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, pointed to the government’s increase in defence spending in recent weeks but said the prime minister, Keir Starmer, was not examining bringing in mandatory recruitment into the armed forces.
McFadden also said on Sunday that countries cannot be “dragooned” into the “coalition of the willing” by the UK. The chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster said that nations have to “step forward themselves” if they want to be part of the group of nations willing to defend a peace deal in Ukraine.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio will visit Saudi Arabia over 10-12 March for talks with Ukrainian counterparts, a statement from the US state department said.
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the frontline. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photos on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. Some online commentators called the gesture as “shameful” and “inappropriate”. The party’s local branch in the town of Polyarniye Zori defended itself against the online backlash, saying critics were making “callous and provocative interpretations” of its gifts.
Joint naval drills organised annually between Iran, Russia and China will start on Monday in the south-eastern Iranian port of Chabahar, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday.
Updated
'I think it'll happen', says Trump about the US-Ukraine minerals deal
When asked if he expected Volodymyr Zelenskyy “to come back” and complete the minerals deal, Donald Trump told Fox News: “Yeah. I think so. I think it’ll happen.”
Later in the interview, Trump added:
You know the other thing with Europe that bothers me? They’ve given Russia more money, by far, for buying their oil than they put into Ukraine.
So they’re paying all this money to Russia and we’re in there for $350bn. Biden should have never done that.”
